Why design completeness should track the project schedule
The level of the completeness of the design for a website should accurately track the completeness of the project. It’s been said before, but it’s worth saying again…
In the past I’ve been guilty of two equal yet opposite mistakes on website projects regarding design implementation. There’s a temptation to leave the implementation of the design right until the end of the project (”It’ll only take a day or two, after all”). There’s also a strong urge to get the design done right at the beginning of the project, to really show the client what the finished article will look like.
Both of these approaches turned out to be mistakes.
When we’ve left the design until the end of the project, the client ends up directionless. Unless they’ve got a programming background, or heck of lot of vision (and most don’t), they just won’t put your lovely design concepts together with your naked ‘Times New Roman’ HTML wireframes. Sure, the site works, and works well, but it just won’t feel right. The client won’t be able to get past how it looks and will ignore all your fervent feature demos because they’ll be thinking about that ugly font.
With one project on which we did this, the client ended up changing their mind too much about what they wanted; had they seen the design progressively improving look and feel they may well have been able to catch the vision for the site quicker. With less understanding clients, you run the danger that all your hard work behind the scenes will be dismissed just because it looks awful and they wonder what you’ve been doing with all that time and money.
So why not get those concepts right onto screen straight away in their full glory? That way they’ll know exactly what they’re getting, right?
Big mistake. When we’ve done this in the past, we’ve noted that clients often equate the progress of the design with the general progress of the site. With one project, we rolled up at the end of the first iteration with a beautiful website that showed the finished design in all its glory. The client was very pleased. However, the very next iteration, after we’d spent just as much time on functionality and ‘behind the scenes stuff’, they were less pleased. Despite us telling them how much we’d accomplished, they just couldn’t quite see it. We then spent quite a while on the back foot trying to convince them stuff was happening, even though the site looked much the same as it did at the start!
So where’s the balance? I’m not sure there’s a perfect middle way; it depends on the client you’re working with and the type of project you’re working on. These days however we progress with the look and feel in stages; it tends to ensure both client and consultancy are on the same page and everyone can measure progress in their own way.